IN GREAT BRITAIN
AND BEYOND
A “Respectable” Anti-Semitism?
ALVIN H. ROSENFELD
ALVIN H. ROSENFELD
iii
Acknowledgments
A number of friends and colleagues read earlier versions of this essay
and suggested ways to improve it. While they are not responsible for
any shortcomings still present, I am certain the final version is better
for their efforts. I would like to thank the following: Edward Alexan-
der, Tamar Benjamin, Paul Bogdanor, Todd Endelman, Harry
Geduld, Barbara Krawcowicz, Vivian Liska, Daniel Nichols, Gale
Nichols, Aron Rodrigue, Erna Rosenfeld, Gavriel Rosenfeld, Natania
Rosenfeld, Sidney Rosenfeld, Roger Temam, and Leona Toker.
Alvin Rosenfeld
Foreword
Two popular national magazines have recently carried cover stories
exploring “The New Face of Anti-Semitism” and “The New Anti-
Semitism.” One would think that a hatred as old and long-lasting as
anti-Semitism could hardly be described as “new.” Yet this protean
virus has reared its head again, in its most recent incarnation, as a
pattern of discourse that poses “merely” as criticism of Israel, but in
reality propagates classic hatred and distrust of Jews. Its promulgators
are quick to insist that they are not anti-Semitic, “only” anti-Zion-
ist—yet they criticize not specific policies or actions of the Jewish
state, but its very existence.
Whether it is the Irish poet and Oxford professor Tom Paulin
proclaiming, “I never believed that Israel had a right to exist at all,”
or the French ambassador to Britain referring to Israel as “that shitty
little country,” or NYU professor of European studies Tony Judt sug-
gesting, “Israel today is bad for the Jews,” the implication is not that
Israel should correct its misguided behavior, but that it needs to go
out of business.
Per Ahlmark, the former deputy prime minister of Sweden, has
pointedly observed, “In the past, the most dangerous anti-Semites
were those who wanted to make the world Judenrein, free of Jews.
Today the most dangerous anti-Semites might be those who want to
make the world Judenstaatrein, free of a Jewish state.”
This new breed of anti-Semite bristles at the notion that his crit-
icism could be characterized as anti-Semitic. “I’m fed up with being
called an anti-Semite,” writes British journalist Deborah Orr. Yet
when such critics contemplate with equanimity the dismantling of
Israel—an act that would endanger the lives of three-sevenths of
world Jewry, not to mention making more vulnerable the other four-
v
vi Anti-Zionism in Great Britian and Beyond
David A. Harris
Executive Director
The American Jewish Committee
Anti-Zionism in Great Britain and Beyond:
A “Respectable” Anti-Semitism?
Following a speech at Harvard University in the spring of 1968,
shortly before his death, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was con-
fronted with a hostile question about Zionism. Then as now, cam-
pus debates featured a good deal of discussion about Israel, some of
it inspired by sentiments of the kind that were to crystallize in the
infamous United Nations resolution of 1975 equating Zionism with
racism. Knowing from hard experience what real racism was, the
Rev. King rejected bigotry in every form and replied unambiguously
to the student who had challenged him: “When people criticize
Zionists, they mean Jews; you are talking anti-Semitism.”1
King’s words were valid then and remain valid today. To say as
much is obviously not to exempt Israel from legitimate criticism.
Like all democratic states, the Jewish state is not perfect and can
benefit from having its policy shortcomings exposed and its actions
debated; as anyone who has been to Israel knows, such critical
debate takes place there almost nonstop. The hostility that Martin
Luther King, Jr. faced at Harvard, though, was not part of an honest
debate or even criticism of a rational kind, but something else—a
surrogate form of anti-Jewish prejudice that passes itself off as “anti-
Zionism.” And so he denounced it in plain terms.
Given the Rev. King’s moral clarity on this issue, one wishes it
had produced a broad and lasting effect, but some thirty-four years
after the celebrated civil rights leader spoke in Cambridge, Lawrence
H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, found himself
compelled to issue a statement about the “profoundly anti-Israel
views” that were being advocated on his campus and in academic
communities elsewhere. Among the troubling developments, he
referred to the campaign launched by hundreds of European aca-
1
2 Anti-Zionism in Great Britian and Beyond
Today it is possible to say that this small nation is the root of evil.
It is full of self-importance and evil stubbornness.13
––Mikis Theodorakis, composer of score for Zorba the Greek
One could compile a large anthology of such statements, for the
mass media, especially in Europe, have been full of them. Outrageous
as they are, they represent a tendency among British and other Euro-
pean intellectuals, particularly on the political left. The historian
Simon Schama has dubbed this kind of denigration of the Jews, espe-
cially in his native England, as “anti-Semitism of the remark.”14
While Schama does not mean to dismiss such hostility by describing
it in these terms, he implies that rhetoric of this sort is unpleasant but
need not be taken too much to heart. But as these slurs multiply and
produce more aggressive versions of themselves, it would be a mis-
take to pass them off as mere “remarks,” for they represent bigotry of
an evidently deep-seated nature, which its purveyors among Britain’s
chattering classes no longer feel constrained to keep under wraps. On
the contrary, there is a certain gusto detectable in the voicing of open
disparagement of the Jews and the Jewish state—even glee on the
part of some who utter such sentiments. Thus, the British journalist
Deborah Orr, commenting on the French ambassador’s slur, is joyful-
ly uninhibited in echoing his vulgar remarks:
Ever since I went to Israel on holiday, I’ve considered it to be a
shitty little country too. And I was under the impression that
even Israelis thought this. I mean, if they thought Israel was small
but perfectly formed, surely they wouldn’t be so hell-bent on
making it bigger, come what may.... In my experience Israel is
shitty and little. What’s more, the daily trauma it undergoes in
defending its right to exist is the main thing that makes the place
so shitty.15
For all of its crudeness, the French ambassador’s remark was not
a public utterance but a stupidity voiced at a private dinner party. By
contrast, Orr’s triple repetition of his vile epithet, published in the
Independent, was specifically meant for public consumption. She
knows her scatological belittlement of Israel will not sit well with the
country’s supporters, but she could hardly care less about offending
the lovers of Zion. The real offense, in her view, is theirs against her.
The Anti-Semitism of the Remark 9
“I’m fed up with being called an anti-Semite,” she writes. “And the
more fed up I get, the more anti-Semitic I sound.” Moreover, if the
Jews “continue to insist that everyone with a word to say against
Israel is an anti-Semite, [they are] going to find one day that the
world is once more divided neatly between anti-Semites and Jews.”16
The threat in these words is clear, as is the bravura with which
they are spoken. Also clear is the disappearance of the taboos that pre-
viously helped to keep such hostilities down. Orr knows what anti-
Semitism is and has written against it in a convincing way. At the same
time, she is oblivious to the anti-Jewish sentiments in her own writing
and seems to think that these are okay as long as they can pass as anti-
Zionism. She formulates the distinction: “Anti-Semitism is disliking
all Jews, anywhere, and anti-Zionism is just disliking the existence of
Israel and opposing those who support it.”17
Later I will return to this distinction. For now, it is worth noting
that the particular animus that Orr represents is hardly idiosyncratic,
but has become increasingly widespread. Tom Paulin, the Irish poet
and Oxford University professor, is on record as identifying the Israel
Defense Forces as the “Zionist SS.” In an interview with an Arabic
newspaper, he stated flat-out: “I never believed that Israel had the
right to exist at all.”18 Although he shows no reservations in linking
the Israeli army to the most brutal of Hitler’s killers and declares
Israel an illegitimate state, Paulin swears he is not an anti-Semite and
bristles at any suggestion that he might be considered one.
A.N. Wilson, another respected British writer, would doubtless
register a similar claim. He evidently once thought that Israel
enjoyed legitimacy and had won a rightful place among the nations,
but in an article in the London Evening Standard (October 22, 2001)
he “reluctantly” came to the conclusion that the Jewish state no
longer had the right to an unquestioned future. “Israel is by defini-
tion an aggressor,” he wrote. Its creation, which he dubs “the 1948
experiment,” was the result of “lazy thinking” and “was doomed to
failure.” In short, the establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle
East might best be viewed today as a provisional measure, taken by
Western powers in a thoughtless moment, and not meant to last. To
10 Anti-Zionism in Great Britian and Beyond
be sure, Wilson is not for driving the Jews into the sea, but in recon-
sidering the matter, “one now sees that Israel never was a state, and it
can only be defended by constant war. Is that what we want?”19
In a later piece, also published in the Evening Standard (April 15,
2002), Wilson charged Israel with carrying out a “terror-policy” so
savage that it included “the unlawful killing of hundreds of Palestini-
ans,” “the poisoning of water supplies,” and the “willful burning of
several church buildings.” Such alleged barbarism, none of which he
bothers to substantiate, “is the equivalent of the Taliban destroying
Buddhist sculpture.”20 Since everyone knows that the Taliban only
got what they deserved, the implication is that Israel, too, no longer
warrants a place among the community of nations.
If one pauses to examine the analogy to Taliban behavior, it
quickly becomes clear that Wilson is talking nonsense. Unlike the
Taliban, who intentionally and ostentatiously set out to destroy all
expressions of faith other than their own, the Israelis show no evi-
dence of waging war against the religious institutions and artistic
monuments of Christianity or Islam. Nor are they poisoning Pales-
tinian water sources, a totally baseless accusation propagated earlier
by Suha Arafat and now reiterated by Wilson. (Not to be outdone by
his wife, Yasir Arafat has accused the Israelis of using depleted urani-
um as a terror weapon against the Palestinians.) None of these hor-
rendous things has occurred, but the accusations, while groundless,
are rhetorically potent and add to the accumulating animosity
against the Jewish state.
Hostile Rhetoric
In these and countless other instances, the rhetoric that now charac-
terizes commentary on Israel in the popular media, especially in
Europe, is often hostile. Israel’s prime minister is mocked as a “fat old
man” and “political pyromaniac.” He is denounced as a “war crimi-
nal” on a par with Slobodan Milosevic, and even equated with Adolf
Hitler. The Jewish state is routinely compared to South Africa under
apartheid or, as if that were not odious enough, Germany under
Hitler. In public debate about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the language
Hostile Rhetoric 11
of Auschwitz circulates broadly, but it is now the Jews who are pre-
sented as perpetrators of genocidal crimes rather than as past victims.
Now that the lid has been taken off criticism of the Jews and the Jew-
ish state, no accusation any longer seems too extreme.
Consider, for instance, Richard Ingrams, writing only days after
9/11 about the disasters wrought on America that day. Although the
Israelis had nothing whatsoever to do with this savage crime, Ingrams
felt moved to entitle his column in the Observer, “Who Will Dare
Damn Israel?”
The mountain of words and pictures last week mirrored the piles
of rubble in New York. Like the rescue workers there, one waded
in trying to find something that was alive, that would illuminate
and explain what had happened.
Noticeable was the reluctance throughout the media to con-
template the Israeli factor—the undeniable and central fact
behind the disaster that Israel is now and has been for some time
an American colony, sustained by billions of American dollars
and armed with American missiles, helicopters and tanks.
Such has been the pressure from the Israeli lobby in this
country that many, even normally outspoken journalists, are
reluctant even to refer to such matters. Nor would you find any-
where in last week’s coverage, any reference whatever to things I
have mentioned here in recent issues of The Observer: the fact,
for example, that Mr. Blair’s adviser on the Middle East is an
unelected, unknown Jewish business-man, Lord Levy, now
installed in the Foreign Office; the fact that this same Lord Levy
is the chief fundraiser for the Labour Party; unmentioned also
would be the close business links with Israel of two of our most
powerful press magnates, Rupert Murdoch and the newly enno-
bled owner of the Telegraph newspapers, Lord Conrad Black.
When Mr. Blair, supported by these gentlemen’s papers,
pledges his support for Mr. Bush as he prepares for war with an
as yet unidentified enemy, we ought to be prepared at least to
incur the charge of anti-Semitism by giving these matters an air-
ing before the balloon goes up.21
A column of this nature in a respectable newspaper would aston-
ish at any time, but appearing only a few days after the attacks of
9/11, it is truly breathtaking. How, Ingrams asks, might one explain
12 Anti-Zionism in Great Britian and Beyond
unlikely that they would have been voiced in the mainstream media
of the West until only a few years ago. Today they are commonplace.
This is no small matter, for the media’s role in determining pub-
lic perception of contemporary events is enormous. According to
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist sharply criticial of Cockburn,
Ingrams, Paulin, Wilson, and their likes, the “British public’s now
incendiary hostility to Israel” is largely owing to media bias. She
refers in particular to the BBC’s “prejudiced, ignorant, and unfair”
coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict and to similar bias in much of
the commentary in the liberal-left press, which fosters the view, “now
openly expressed, that the creation of Israel was a terrible mistake.”24
As illustration, consider the case of Peter Hain, a former minister
in the British Foreign Office, who is on record as stating that “the
present Zionist state is by definition racist and will have to be dis-
mantled.” Moreover, such a task “can be brought about in an orderly
way through negotiation ... or it will be brought about by force. The
choice lies with the Israelis. They can recognize now that the tide of
history is against their brand of greedy oppression, or they can dig in
and invite a bloodbath.”25 Calling unabashedly for the eradication of
the Jewish state, Hain promotes a “solution” to the Arab-Israeli dis-
pute that could have been scripted by the most fervent followers of
Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Anti-Zionism of this order goes so far
beyond reasonable “criticism” of Israel as to make it pointless to
debate whether it is anti-Semitic.
believe that “the Jews must be punished by the loss of their homeland
for their refusal to believe in Christ.” Others in the established
church—the great majority, one would hope—would not endorse
such a theologically primitive and punitive view, but Phillips records
conversations with prominent Anglican figures who report on some
deeply disturbing sentiments.
According to Colin Blakely, editor of the Church of England
Newspaper, “Whenever I print anything sympathetic to Israel, I get
deluged with complaints that I am Zionist and racist.” Andrew
White, the canon of Coventry Cathedral, who has devoted himself to
promoting dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, commented on
attitudes in the church: “These go beyond legitimate criticism of
Israel into hatred of the Jews. I get hate mail calling me a Jew-lover
and saying my work is evil.” Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, director of the
Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, says that church
audiences he has spoken to across Great Britain about the implica-
tions of September 11 “blame Israel for Muslim anger; they want to
abandon the Jewish state as a ‘dead’ part of scripture and support
‘justice’ for the Palestinians instead.” Dr. Sookhdeo adds: “What dis-
turbs me at the moment is the very deeply rooted anti-Semitism
latent in Britain and the West. I simply hadn’t realized how deep
within the English psyche is this fear of the power and influence of
the Jews.”26
Edward Kessler, who has also studied these issues, is certain that,
at its highest levels, the Church of England does not endorse replace-
ment theology or encourage views that adhere to the church’s former
teachings of contempt for Judaism and the Jews. But he notes that
the more constructive positions taken by church officials “do not
necessarily represent the faithful and their understanding of the rela-
tionship between Christianity and Judaism. There is clearly a debate
going on among some Christians that shows replacement theology to
be alive and well.” 27
There is also a debate going on within British trade unions,
where the slogan “justice for the Palestinians” has pretty much
defined the terms and pointed out the direction for political action.
Churches, Trade Unions, and Universities 15
with the Nazi brush was what they were about; add to that the exclu-
sion of Israeli colleagues from respectable academic society, and it
becomes crystal clear that the pariah status formerly assigned to the
Jews as a people was now being reassigned to the Jewish state.
Sinnott was incensed and proceeded to tell Greenblatt that, dur-
ing his seven years at the University of Illinois in Chicago, “I was
always amazed that the Israeli atrocities for which my tax dollars were
paying were never reported in the American news media which were
either controlled by Jews or browbeaten by them in the way that you
[Greenblatt] have just exemplified.” He concluded his tirade by
declaring: “When the bulk of the American population finds it has
been duped by a real Zionist conspiracy ... all the traditional and sup-
posedly long-discredited Jewish conspiracy theories will gain a new
lease of life.”32
Upon receiving this missive, Greenblatt remarked that his British
colleague Michael Sinnott “clearly has a problem with Jews.”33 But
Sinnott is hardly alone in this regard. Andrew Wilkie, the Nuffield
Professor of Pathology at Oxford University, seems to be troubled by
a similar problem. Upon getting an application from Amit Duvshani,
an Israeli Ph.D. student who asked to pursue advanced research in
Professor Wilkie’s laboratory, Wilkie wrote back: “Thank you for
contacting me, but I don’t think this would work. I have a huge
problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground
from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict
gross human right abuses on the Palestinians.” Noticing from his
resume that Duvshani, like most Israelis, had done his obligatory
military service, Professor Wilkie wrote that there was “no way that I
would take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army.”
Duvshani, in short, was barred from consideration solely on the basis
of being an Israeli. Wilkie concluded his rejection by stating: “As you
may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views.”
When news of this incident was made public, Oxford University
officials quickly issued a statement making clear that Professor
Wilkie’s actions did not represent university policy, and later sus-
pended him without pay for two months, requiring him to undergo
A Brief History of Anti-Semitism in England 19
home for most who choose to reside there. The first recorded blood
libel charge occurred in England in the mid-twelfth century, followed
soon afterward by massacres of Jews in several cities, the most infa-
mous taking place in York in 1190. A century later, in 1290, England
expelled its Jews––the first European nation to employ forced exile as
a means of dealing with what later came to be called “the Jewish
question.” That is a sorry distinction, but since their return under
Oliver Cromwell in the mid-seventeenth century, Jews living in
Great Britain have fared a good deal better than Jews living in a num-
ber of other European countries.
That is far from saying, however, that Great Britain has been free
of anti-Jewish animosity in the modern period.35 To its credit, the
country has seen nothing remotely like the horrors of Czarist and
Nazi persecution. Nevertheless, episodes of public anti-Semitism,
sometimes of a violent kind, have been a fact of British life. In the
mid-1930s, Oswald Mosley and his fascist Blackshirts assaulted Jews
and attacked Jewish property on a regular basis. Intermittent activity
of this sort continued through the years of World War II and into the
postwar period. While Mosley never attracted large numbers, his fol-
lowers caused bodily harm and created genuine fear among London’s
Jews, and their legacy survives into the present. In more recent years,
the National Front and other extreme right-wing and racialist
groups, including skinheads and neo-Nazis, have been a source of
sporadic violence against immigrants and minorities, including Jews,
and continue to keep the communal life of all of these groups on
edge.
As the historian Tony Kushner has argued, British Jews have also
had to contend with antipathies of a less brutal, but more invidious
kind. An old-style “anti-Semitism of exclusion” has operated for years
to marginalize the Jews and keep them from being seen as altogether
British. From the perspective of this genteel prejudice, the question
remains: Can they be fully assimilated or is there not, at bottom, a
contradiction between being British and being Jewish? At the same
time that they have been the objects of exclusion, a liberal “anti-
Semitism of tolerance” has seemed to welcome Jews, but it exacts as
A Brief History of Anti-Semitism in England 21
ton’s inner circles, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Ari
Fleischer, all of whom were said to be having a negative, if more indi-
rect, influence on Blair’s thinking.42
The notion that Jews are conspiring for selfish reasons against a
nation’s broader national interests is a variant of the poisonous charge
familiar from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. To see a “cabal” oper-
ating still today and on both sides of the Atlantic conforms with the
Protocols’ exposé of a supposed international Jewish conspiracy.
Dalyell knew he would be criticized for pointing to what he obvious-
ly believes to be undue Jewish political influence, and he was ready
with a response: “I am not going to be labeled anti-Semitic. My chil-
dren worked on a kibbutz. But the time has come for candor.” While
some dismissed Dalyell’s outburst as eccentric or unworthy of com-
ment, the BBC’s flagship news program, Newsnight, lent credence to
his allegations by devoting a lengthy and by no means unfavorable
segment to the purported power and influence of the American Jew-
ish lobby.
It is unlikely that those involved with the Muslim Public Affairs
Committee, a political action group in Great Britain, have had many
of their own children working on Israeli kibbutzim; but, then, it is
also unlikely that they felt a need of a defense against charges of anti-
Semitism when they followed up Dalyell’s exposé of “Jewish influ-
ence” with one of their own. Prominently posted on their web site as
of early July 2003 was their version of Dalyell’s Jewish “cabal”—a
rundown of “The Men in Tony’s Life.” Singled out for special men-
tion are Lord Woolf, Lord Goldsmith, Lord Janner, Sir Ronald
Cohen, Sir Sigmund Sternberg, and others with conspicuously Jew-
ish names, all of whom are said to be part of the “network of influ-
ence that certain business leaders and millionaires (with a particular
ideological view within ‘New Labour’)” have now established at the
very heart of British political power.43 One can read about their busi-
ness interests, their political activities, their personal fortunes—and,
of course, their Zionist connections and contributions to Jewish
charities—all to inform British readers about who is really running
things at 10 Downing Street.
Street-Level Anti-Semitism 25
Street-Level Anti-Semitism
In addition to the kinds of hostility described above, there is also an
increase in street-level anti-Semitism in Great Britain, as there has
been on the Continent. On the one hand, this is nothing new, as
those who have tracked incidents over the years make clear; however,
such violence has taken on a new intensity of late and seems to be
26 Anti-Zionism in Great Britian and Beyond
assuming forms that cause new concern for British Jews. In the first
half of 2002, synagogues were broken into and desecrated in Fins-
bury Park and Swansea; in November of 2003 the Hillock Hebrew
Congregation Synagogue near Manchester was the target of an arson
attack, and the Orthodox Edgeware Synagogue in London was also
attacked (the second time this year that this synagogue has been tar-
geted). In May 2003, hundreds of graves in Plashet, the largest Jew-
ish cemetery in East London, were damaged, and in August
headstones were smashed at a Jewish cemetery in Prestwich. Numer-
ous hostile acts of a less dramatic nature have been directed against
Jews and Jewish institutions as well. In fact, the Community Service
Trust reported in May 2003 that the number of attacks against Jews
in Great Britain rose by 75 percent in the first three months of 2003.
While no one has yet been killed, individual Jews have received death
threats and been beaten in more than one British town; Jewish estab-
lishments, many heavily guarded, have been the targets of violence of
various kinds; and Jewish students at British universities have been
continually harassed.
In the view of Michael Whine, a spokesman for the Board of
Deputies of British Jews, “the Iraq war fed anti-Semitism because
groups from across the political and social spectrum alleged that the
war was fought for ‘Zionist’ interests.”47 According to Whine, British
Jews over the years have learned to adapt to a “general background
level of anti-Semitic violence, verbal and physical, against which we
all live our lives,” but more recently “there seems to have been a gen-
uine change, both qualitative and quantitative.”
There were 22 synagogue desecrations ... in the 22 months
before October 2000, but 78 in the 22 months since. Also,
assaults on members of the Jewish community since October
2000 have often been sustained beatings leading to hospitaliza-
tion, compared to the “roughing up” that more typically
occurred before this point.48
Past anti-Semitic incidents, Whine reports, most likely were car-
ried out by skinheads or neo-Nazis, but, of late, the aggression seems
to be part of “the overspill of Middle East tension” and is most likely
Street-Level Anti-Semitism 27
impossible to know how many other British Jews share her feelings.
Continental Anti-Semitism
The kinds of anti-Israel rhetoric and anti-Jewish actions described
thus far are hardly limited to Great Britain. In much of Europe there
is growing antipathy to the Jewish state, which translates into
increased hostility to Jews. The evidence is all too clear: Synagogues
and Jewish schools have been sacked and burned; Jewish cemeteries
have been repeatedly vandalized; and adult Jews and Jewish children
have been beaten and harassed in their shops, schools, and city
streets. Numerous incidents of this kind have occurred in Belgium,
Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, and the countries of the for-
mer Soviet Union. The worst site for anti-Semitic violence by far has
been France, where some 1,300 attacks against Jews and Jewish insti-
tutions have taken place over the past three years.
In the face of these developments, it is natural enough that Jews
are concerned. Some will no longer wear in public such traditional
Jewish markers as skull caps or pendants that display the Jewish star.
Among those who can afford to do so, some are now buying second
homes in Israel, the United States, and other countries abroad. Even
as Jewish intellectuals and communal leaders meet to discuss the pos-
itive role that Jews might play in a new and united Europe, a degree
of uncertainty about the future is detectable.
One figure who has spoken up for the Jews is Per Ahlmark, for-
mer leader of the Swedish Liberal Party and deputy prime minister of
Sweden. Recognizing that what begins as casual slurs against Jews can
quickly escalate into harmful accusations and open discrimination,
Ahlmark has been lucid in his assessment of the present situation in
Europe and forceful in warning about its dangers:
Compared to most previous anti-Jewish outbreaks, this one is
often less directed against individual Jews. It attacks primarily the
collective Jew, the State of Israel. And then such attacks start a
chain reaction of assaults on individual Jews and Jewish institu-
tions.... In the past, the most dangerous anti-Semites were those
who wanted to make the world Judenrein, free of Jews. Today the
most dangerous anti-Semites might be those who want to make
the world Judenstaatrein, free of a Jewish state.52
Continental Anti-Semitism 29
tions elsewhere in the world,... the spirit of 1975 is alive and well.”63
It was in 1975, of course, that the United Nations, acting under the
influence of the Soviet bloc, in cooperation with Arab and third
world states, passed a resolution demonizing Israel as a racist country.
Although the resolution itself has since been revoked, the spirit that
provoked it has been revived, with all of the negative results that one
might expect. So writers who are otherwise silent about gross human
rights abuses elsewhere—in Chechnya, Tibet, or the Sudan––are
quick to raise their voices passionately when it comes to Israel. And
these voices are often no longer just critical but mean-spirited and
vituperative.
Motivation
It is in order, therefore, to question what motivates someone to
declare that Israel is a “shitty little country,” or is overrun by
“racism,” or guilty of “ethnic cleansing,” South African-style
“apartheid” or Auschwitz-like “genocide.” Israel has been accused of
all of these sins and more, and the Jews of the world are steadily
falling within the same circle of accusation. In the face of these
charges, it is not only legitimate but necessary to ask if what passes as
anti-Zionism is not, in fact, anti-Semitism in a new guise.
No one has engaged this question more directly and responded
to it more incisively than Israeli writer Hillel Halkin:
One cannot be against Israel or Zionism, as opposed to this or
that Israeli policy or Zionist position, without being anti-Semit-
ic. Israel is the state of the Jews. Zionism is the belief that the
Jews should have a state. To defame Israel is to defame the Jews.
To wish it never existed, or would cease to exist, is to wish to
destroy the Jews.64
Halkin’s argument is as forceful as it is lucid, and one would like
to believe that reasonable people would recognize its merit. Israel’s
supporters, of course, would immediately say “amen.” But how per-
suasive is Halkin likely to be with Israel’s detractors, who talk about
Israel’s “Final Solution of the Palestinian Question” and its “concen-
tration camps” on the West Bank? One need not be a practiced
Motivation 35
say as well that those who apply one standard of moral judgment to
Jews or the Jewish state and another to every other people and state
are guilty of anti-Semitism. One can add that those who turn against
Jews the language of their own unprecedented suffering are being not
only unfair but hateful. If these things are pointed out to them, will
they then stop being unfair and hateful?
Most probably will not, but some may. The editor of the British
periodical the New Statesman, for instance, apologized for running a
particularly offensive cover story (January 14, 2002), “A Kosher Con-
spiracy?,” after numerous readers angrily pointed out how blatantly
anti-Semitic the feature was and an ad-hoc group of demonstrators
occupied their editorial offices. The cover, which displayed a gold
Star of David piercing a supine British Union Jack, was a graphic
illustration of a classic anti-Semitic charge: The Jews, an untrustwor-
thy and dangerous people, conspire to assault the countries in which
they reside. The apology was in order, but the fact that a respectable
journal would not hesitate to put up a cover illustration that could
have been lifted from Der Stürmer shows that the threshold of public
decency toward the Jews has been lowered.
degree of resonance among the faithful. Those who have been harass-
ing Jews and attacking Jewish schools and synagogues in Europe may
not need much ideological reinforcement in carrying out their
crimes, but they doubtless feel encouraged by the strident anti-Israel
and anti-Semitic messages broadcast throughout the Muslim world.
These messages now come from many different quarters and
show how pervasive and acceptable Judeophobia has become. A
plain-spoken denigration of the Jews is a popular part of Muslim
political rhetoric, as was dramatically demonstrated at the Tenth
Islamic Summit Conference held in Malaysia on October 16, 2003.
Addressing this major gathering of Muslim leaders, Mahathir
Mohamad, prime minister of Malaysia, declared, “The Europeans
killed six million Jews out of twelve million. But today the Jews rule
this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” They
are a cunning adversary, he added, and have “now gained control of
the most powerful countries.” He urged Muslims to match wits with
the clever Jews to resist their hegemonic power. His speech received a
standing ovation from the kings, presidents, prime ministers, and
sheiks in the audience and gained favorable comment elsewhere in
the Muslim world.66
Rhetorical attacks against Jews are standard fare in mosques and
Muslim schools; no doubt they give heart to radicalized Muslims in
Europe and further inflame their already well-developed hostility to
Israel. Encouraged by their preachers and teachers to regard the Jews
as their enemy, the most militant among them feel justified in
assaulting Jews and Jewish institutions. This is an ominous develop-
ment and needs to be confronted by the civil authorities of Europe.
To date, however, they have not always responded in a forthright and
effective manner, in part for fear of appearing to be insufficiently
“pro-Palestinian” or “anti-Islam.”
actions of those on the extreme right and within radical Islam, a seri-
ous challenge today involves an array of people on the political
left––journalists, intellectuals, clergy, academicians, media personali-
ties, and others––whose voices drive much of public opinion. Among
them, one might expect a more open mind and a greater measure of
good will. As has been documented in these pages, though, under the
cover of anti-Zionism, otherwise intelligent people now feel at liberty
to say the most damning things about Jews and the Jewish state, and
not be overly troubled by it. Their motives vary, and certainly not all
critics of Israel are hell-bent on seeing it brought to an end. Within
liberal-left commentary in Europe, however, an obsessive and often
hostile focus on Israel is prominent, and a growing irritation with
Jews who are identified with the country is emerging as well. Antho-
ny Julius is no doubt right when he sees anti-Zionism of this sort as
“the ideology of a leftist anti-Semitism nostalgic for the days when it
was acceptable to attack Jews.”67
Given its potential to do serious harm, this ideology must be
continually exposed for what it is, although it is far from clear
whether such exposure will suffice to discourage its acceptance as a
normative part of contemporary thinking. While we are seeing more
of it today than in the recent past, anti-Zionism is not a new devel-
opment, but has been a feature of Marxist ideology for decades; it
was advanced by the Soviet Union and its allies with greater or lesser
intensity over the years both at home and in international forums.68
With the collapse of the Soviet system, much of the political force
behind anti-Zionism faded, but it left behind a legacy that has been
revived in recent years by an unusual convergence of right-wing and
left-wing advocates of causes that range from populist anti-Semitism
to universalist anti-globalization.69 When one adds to this mix the
partisans of jihadist Islam, one confronts a weird but fervent combi-
nation of oppositional voices.
Of these, Israel’s most vocal and influential adversaries are to be
found on the political left. Several things might explain their antipa-
thy. For some, Jewish particularism, always a problem for those who
embrace universalist ideals, is especially troublesome when it express-
Anti-Jewish Hostility from the Left 39
Guilt Feelings
Other factors also contribute to Israel’s unpopularity. Great Britain
and the other European countries feel no burden of historical respon-
sibility for the problems in Tibet and Chechnya, but with respect to
the problems of the Middle East, and particularly the lot of the Pales-
tinians, they are implicated and sometimes confess to feelings of guilt
over their colonial pasts. This is especially the case among people on
the left in Great Britain, who view the era of the Palestine Mandate
in bitterly negative terms and regard the creation of the Jewish state
as a post-colonial disaster––the “original sin” of their country’s mis-
taken politics. As Geoffrey Alderman puts it, Israel in this view “is an
artificial and illegitmate entity, and will always remain so, whether its
government is of the left or the right.”70 The guilt of those who
Guilt Feelings 41
helped to bring the Jewish state into being almost guarantees that the
integrity of Israel’s birth will be forever open to question and its later
development frowned upon and discredited.
In many cases, this legacy of guilt coalesces with the even greater
sense of guilt present in European societies to this day over the mur-
der of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. There is no accurate way to
measure the impact of the memory of the Nazi genocide on current-
day attitudes toward Israel, but the inversion and application of
Holocaust references in narrative descriptions of Israel’s conduct
toward the Palestinians is revealing. At the least, it suggests that many
years of accumulated guilt and resentment toward the Jews because
of the crimes of Auschwitz are finding a release through the false
accusation that Israel is guilty of committing similar crimes against
the Palestinians. The increasingly popular Sharon=Hitler analogy is
only the most extreme version of the Jew=Nazi equations currently in
fashion. Jews recoil in disgust and horror from these charges and
hope they will be denounced by others, but this hope is often frus-
trated.
In an age of strident anti-Americanism, Israel also draws the ire
of many because of its close association with the United States,
Israel’s strongest and most dependable ally and, in the eyes of its
adversaries, another outlaw nation. The two countries are demonized
frequently and in similar terms, many of them drawn from the lexi-
con of the Hitler era. The British playwright Harold Pinter, for
example, sees America as a land of lunatics and barbarians: “The
United States is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining
to know what they are going to do next.... There is only one compar-
ison: Nazi Germany.”71 The British novelist Margaret Drabble is also
beside herself: “My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrol-
lable. It has possessed me like a disease. It rises in my throat like acid
reflux.... I now loathe the United States.”72
These examples can be multiplied many times over by citations
of a similar nature from across Europe and throughout the Muslim
world. They indicate, in the words of Salman Rushdie, that America
faces “an ideological enemy that may turn out to be harder to defeat
42 Anti-Zionism in Great Britian and Beyond
Notes
52. Per Ahlmark’s remarks are taken from “Combating Old/New Anti-
Semitism,” a speech he delivered at Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem, April 11, 2002.
See www.yad-vashem.org.il.
53. “There Is No Anti-Semitism in Europe,” Jerusalem Post, June 27, 2003.
54. Guardian, Feb. 24, 2002.
55. Seumas Milne, “This Slur of Anti-Semitism Is Used to Defend Repres-
sion,” Guardian, May 9, 2002.
56. Guardian, Feb. 24, 2002.
57. Ibid.
58. Desmond Tutu, “Apartheid in the Holy Land,” Guardian, April 29,
2002. For a brief but revealing assessment of Bishop Tutu’s attitudes toward
Israel, see Edward Alexander, The Jewish Wars: Reflections by One of the Bel-
ligerents (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), pp. 66-68.
59. The words, from the New York City Tribune, Nov. 27, 1984, are cited
by Edward Alexander, The Jewish Wars, p. 67.
60. Deborah Orr, Independent, Dec. 21, 2001.
61. Tony Judt, “Israel: The Alternative,” New York Review of Books, Oct.
23, 2003, pp. 8, 10.
62. The degree to which Israel and the United States are viewed negatively
was corroborated by an EU opinion survey in November 2003 that asked
which countries Europeans consider the greatest threat to world peace. Israel
was the country most frequently named, with 59 percent of Europeans
answering in the affirmative; following Israel, the second most frequently
mentioned country was the United States. The survey can be found at
http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/flash/fl151_iraq_full_report.pdf.
63. Konstanty Gebert, “Remarks at OSCE Conference on Anti-Semi-
tism,” Vienna, July 19-20, 2003 (unpublished paper).
64. Hillel Halkin, “The Return of Anti-Semitism,” Commentary, Feb.
2002, p. 31.
65. James Petras, “Palestine: the Final Solution and José Saramago,”
http://www.rebelion.org/petras/english/saramago100402.htm.
66. “Dr. Mahathir Opens 10th OIC Summit,” Star Online, October 16,
2003, http://thestar.com.my/oic/story.asp?file=/2003/10/16/oic/200310161
23438&sec=; see also “Islamic Anti-Semitism,” New York Times, Oct. 18,
2003.
67. Anthony Julius, from a lecture at the conference, “Old Demons, New
Debates: Anti-Semitism in the West,” sponsored by the YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research, at the Center for Jewish History, New York, May 11-14,
2003.
48 Anti-Zionism in Great Britian and Beyond